


Hurt

by MurielJones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 14:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19907395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MurielJones/pseuds/MurielJones
Summary: Dean is hurt in an accident.  Sam nurses him at home in the bunker. His pain meds are in-adequate, eventually he is out of choices.  Story is written from Sam's POV as a care provider.





	Hurt

Sam was in the kitchen fetching a glass of water, and he knew it was bullshit.

The accident – accident, Dean had been this badly hurt in an _accident_ – had been more than six months ago now. He had been underneath baby, fixing something underneath – Sam didn’t know what, baby was still sitting in the garage – when she had slipped off the jack and fallen. Dean had a crushed hip, a broken pelvis, cracked sacrum, broken lumbar vertebrae. It had fallen to Sam to take medical decisions, that shouldn’t have been hard, they did it more than most – but suddenly it was, should they try and save Dean’s leg or amputate at the hip, hip replacement wasn’t an option, the pelvis was too fractured, maybe later when bones were knitted. They had warned him that Dean might be permanently in pain, all Sam could say in his own defense is that he hadn’t understood. Sam had asked if Dean would live – the nursing staff looked doubtful – the doctor assured Sam there was plenty they could do; but they had let Sam chose if they proceed with treatment or let Dean go. Sam hadn’t thought he would ever let Dean go, not again, he couldn’t. But here they were now.

Sam stood in the kitchen, looking at the wall above the sink, listening. He hated leaving Dean alone, especially this time.

Dean had a litany of internal injuries – Sam could recite them complete with consequences and complications. At this point he could recognize each complication and address most. His brother had been home for nearly six months. No one had really addressed the pain, when they said: “He will be in pain” Sam had already known that Dean would be in pain, it had barely registered for him, he was busy with whether Dean would live; and no one had said ‘acute’ or ‘forever’. Oh, and no-one had said: ‘we can treat it, but we won’t’.

All hell, literally, was breaking loose around them. The hospital had been packed, Dean was so close to death that felt lucky they had been seen, he thought it was the just the number they had been assigned when they pulled in. Sam wondered if Chuck had made sure they got that number – made sure Dean would continue to suffer. Sam wondered how much worse he had made the injury by moving Dean – he knew Dean would have died if they had waited for an ambulance. He had prayed. He had cursed Chuck – what as Chuck going to do - open the gates of Hell upon the Earth? And he had prayed to Cas. Cas never answered, Cas was no where, Cas was a warrior, he was everywhere, he was saving the world, he had deserted them, he was dead. Schrodinger’s Cas. Sam didn’t know. He thought Dean prayed also. He wondered if Dean wanted to go to Heaven, or if he just wanted to be done, gone, and peacefully burnt to ashes.

Sam filled the glass with water, not sure if he should run back – again – or if he should take his time as he was intended to. He turned off the faucet, closed his eyes and stood listening. He would wait.

Dean was in the ICU barely alive, Sam sat beside him, slept in a chair, his arms resting on Dean’s bed, his head resting on his arms, a hand holding onto Dean’s. Sam could have called it. He wondered if he should. Dean would never be the same, but he would be _Dean._ That’s what he had thought, that’s what he promised the both of them. Dean was on so many drugs in the ICU, for infections, for swelling, for pain. That was the last time Dean had fentynol, the last time he wasn’t in pain. The day they moved him down to surgical care it started to go to hell; Dean was starting to heal, he needed to start pt, he needed to start a road back to life. They moved him to post surgery and changed his meds. Neither Sam nor Dean knew that was the beginning of their end; Dean was downgraded to morphine, he hurt, he hurt more than Sam thought he should, the doctors wouldn’t change it, protocol said no phentonyl outside of the ICU. Sam and Dean thought the pt made it worse, they thought the pt would make it better, and Dean was slowly learning to move, he joked around, he was bored, he asked about baby and talked about fixing her. For the first time he struggled out of bed into a chair he cried – and Sam got more worried – Dean used his walker, he tried crutches, he tried to refuse a wheel chair. Sam thought at first it was that Dean didn’t want to be in a chair, who the hell would, and he tried to talk to Dean about it; it hurt, that was the answer, sitting hurt, and while he could move better, more quickly, in the chair, it hurt too much, he could stumble around with the walker. Sam worried, it was unlike Dean to forgo mobility. Sam asked for more morphine, there was a limit, and Sam knew god damn good and well it was below the amount Dean needed, and below the safe amount for Dean, but Dean was at the hospital’s limit. Sam started thinking about how to steal it.

Dean could sit up in bed, and he did, it would bring tears to his eyes, he would lose color as the nurses helped him up, they showed Sam what to do, and Sam did it, he flinched as Dean pleaded with Sam to keep going, that he wanted to go home, and he would do this. Dean would sweat, he would tremor, he was in as much pain as with a new fracture – this wasn’t new, Sam asked for new meds. If they wanted to get Dean out of the hospital he would need to be on oxycodone. The hospital administration was worried about addiction. Sam knew that he couldn’t get in out of the vault where the opiods were stored more than once; he didn’t do it, Dean wouldn’t make it without him if something went wrong, and they could figure something out about the drugs. 

Dean could eat a somewhat normal diet, they joked about burgers and Sam bought canned carrots for when Dean came home, he could feed himself, he could change his cath bag, Sam could change the catheter, although Dean bitched, he still had feeling, but Dean said it didn’t hurt as much as his back and pelvis. Sam wrote that off to Dean attempting to be stoic, or funny, he wasn’t sure which – and he worried that it was true. That Dean wasn’t in the least sexually responsive to touch barely made it onto Sam’s radar, and he would never have thought it was that pain.

They changed Dean to oxycodone the last week in the hospital. Sam was already scrambling to get extra for when Dean came home – to get enough, to get oxy, to get morphine. They other hunters weren’t too happy with them, yeah, they heard what had happened, and couldn’t Sam get out there and help with this shit storm of his creation? Some gave him morphine anyhow, it was a favor for old time’s sake; it wasn’t a source. And oxy was a currency. Sam had been out of the real world for months now, and things were way way worse. He was afraid that Chuck was protecting them.

Sam went back to the hospital every week towing Dean with him, helping Dean stand in the walker because Dean just couldn’t sit anymore, waiting in line with the other souls all for one week of a little less hell, all for one week of not quite enough, or not enough at all.

Three hours to Wichita, Four hours to Overland Park, Three and half to Kansas City, Three and a half to Olathe, Three to Topeka, Three to Lawrence. 

Once a week, a trip to Kansas City to the University Hospital, but it was too far; so Sam tried Salina—and they got cut off: drug seeking behavior. He was begging, “It’s for my brother, its not for me.” And then he said the thing that was true: “He will die without out.” The nurse didn’t even look empathic, she called him an addict, recommended he sign up on a waitlist for rehab, and moved past him to vet the next patient. There were too many patients.

Sam had tried finding street drugs. Nothing like a little heaven-and-hell all out war to make street drugs hard to find –and expensive. Heroin, even that was pricy, but Oxy was unaffordable, and he couldn’t leave Dean alone long enough to get to Lawrence to get good quality and, and Dean couldn’t lie comfortably in the back of the fucking Prius even with the seats down, so Sam had find heroin in Lebanon. Theoretically it could have worked, but, luck of the Winchester’s, it was cut with something and barely worked, next batch was cut with street fentynol, it nearly killed Dean. Luckily “luckily” they had Naloxone on hand, the hospital had thoughtfully provided in case Dean overdosed on his meds—which was going to work like how, since even when gave meds, they didn’t give Dean enough meds for a week to last three days. 

Then there was nothing. Then he screamed, and then he stopped. Dean just stopped, he stopped trying to get out of bed, he stopped eating, he had tears in his eyes from putting a t-shirt on. So he stopped. Sam didn’t beg, he just showed up with crustless sandwiches and took them away uneaten, he brought Dean water, he cleaned Dean, who didn’t resist. Sam barley left the bunker. Dean didn’t eat. Sam ate dry cereal and watched Dean. It was like a death watch, except that no one was meant to be dying.

“It’s worse.” 

Sam startled. Dean hadn’t spoken in how long? Sam forgot in a way that Dean spoke. He didn’t speak to Dean either. They had been quiet for a long time.

“It hurts more than it did Sammy.” 

“Can I get…” What the hell was he going to offer Dean? Cereal? Water? Tylenol? He ran a hand through Dean’s hair, it calmed Dean down when he as sleeping for minutes, let him sleep a while longer. Sam hated to sleep, hated having his eyes off Dean in case it got worse. It did get worse. 

Dean leans into Sam’s touch. “My colt.”

Sam wants to stop him, he wants to say no, he wants to beg, he wants to tell Dean he will do it, he should have let go before all this happened, when he had the chance, he wants to say it will be alright, give it time, it will all be alright, he wants to say we have been through worse, and made it out the other end. But Sam isn’t sure. There is meant to be a difference between hell pain, and here and now pain—but there doesn’t seem to be.

Sam takes the gun out of Dean’s drawer. Dean couldn’t have reached it there, maybe if they had practiced, kept up with the pt, the ot, something, maybe something. Maybe then, something. Sam makes sure it is loaded - it is - and sets it on Dean’s chest. He wants to bend over and kiss Dean’s forehead, he wants to pray to Cas one last time, he wants to ask Dean to wait just a little while, but he doesn’t.

“Get me some water, Sammy.” 

So here is Sam waiting in the kitchen, he hates leaving Dean at all, but he hates it even more this time.

**Author's Note:**

> The USA, in a attempt to control the number of new opiod addictions, has legislatively controlled pain medication to a point where people who were previously in a stable state of manageable pain are left without care, debilitated, in acute chronic pain, some even choosing suicide over a life of agony.


End file.
